You’d think by now I’d stop being surprised by how these deals happen.

But here we are — another acquisition for Employer.com, and it all started with an X DM from Amogh Chaturvedi. No banker, no deck, no 5-hour diligence marathon. Just a young founder, a great product, and a simple question: “Hey, want to buy this?”

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Spoiler: we did.

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This week, we announced the acquisition of Dough — an AI-enabled SMB accounting software platform built by a YC-backed team. It’s a killer product — smart, simple, beautifully designed — and it fits perfectly with our vision at Employer.com: building the back-office OS for small businesses.

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But honestly, the product was a small part of the reason I wanted to do this deal. And, if we’re being honest, it wasn’t even the most important part. It’s important, sure. But more important? The product, like all good products, is a reflection of its founder - and founders really don’t get more impressive than Amogh. Present company excluded.

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Maybe.

How It Happened: Needing Dough

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A few months ago, I’m scrolling through DMs (finally catching up), and I saw a note from a founder I didn’t know. He’s 19, Stanford dropout, YC alum — already on his second startup. He and his co-founders had built an accounting product that worked, but during YC, they pivoted to a new AI company (Human Behavior — more on that in a bit).

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Rather than mothball the product, Amogh was out there, hustling, trying to find a home for it since the product still had massive unrealized potential to help SMBs. He’d followed up a few times (note to founders: follow up — it matters), and when we dug in, here’s what stood out:

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• The product was legit — real market fit
  
  
• It was built for the exact audience we serve
  
  
• He didn’t need a huge process or inflated valuation — just a good outcome for something they’d put a lot of love into.
  

So we moved fast, structured a pure software acquisition, and got the deal done in less than 30 days.

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‍Rolling Out the Dough

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If you’ve been following me for a while, you know what we’re building at Employer.com. We believe the back office — accounting, taxes, payroll, banking, HR — is still way too fragmented and broken for small businesses.

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It shouldn’t take 6 vendors and 12 logins to run your business. We’re fixing that — piece by piece — by building the most complete back-office platform for SMBs.

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Dough’s software plugs right into that vision.

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• It’s modern.
  
  
• It’s founder-built.
  
  
• It gives us another way to help small businesses simplify their accounting.
  
  

Also — as any founder knows — sometimes a product just deserves to live on. Dough was that kind of product,and we wanted to help take it the next mile.

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Dough: The Deal Behind the Deal Sheet‍

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Look — I’ve done the big M&A processes. The bankers. The decks. The pitch theater. It works, but it’s exhausting.

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When you can do a founder-to-founder deal — fast, clean, fair — it’s better for everyone:

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• No one’s paying 6% fees, and hundreds of thousands in legal costs.
  
  
• No one’s bogged down in a process.
  
  
• The product gets to market faster.
  
  

And — maybe most importantly — it rewards the kind of hustle we should want to see more of in this ecosystem. A 19-year-old founder cold DM’ing buyers for a product that still deserves to exist?

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That’s the kind of hustle I’ll bet on every time.

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Dough's Secret Ingredient

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I want to give a shout-out to Amogh here. He’s already done what many founders take a decade to figure out:

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• Built a strong product
  
  
• Pivoted at the right time
  
  
• Got an acquisition done
  
  
• And is now heads-down on his next big thing
  
  

For those who don’t know: their current company, Human Behavior, is an AI platform that analyzes real user sessions to give better behavioral insights. It’s a smart space.

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They just closed an oversubscribed seed round led by a tier 1 firm — and I'm pretty confident we’ll all be hearing more from them soon.‍

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Starter Dough: What's Next For Employer.com

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For us: we’re going to integrate Dough’s tech into our existing products at Employer.com — Bench, Mainstreet, and beyond. You’ll see it live in the coming months.

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Bigger picture: we’re going to keep buying founder-built products that help us simplify the back office for SMBs.

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If you’re building in that space and wondering if it’s too early to talk to us — it’s not. My DMs are open. We love backing great founders and great products, whether it’s through investment or acquisition.‍

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Slide In: Turning DMs into Dough

A lot of people talk about how “social media is dead” or “DMs don’t work anymore.” I get it — cold DMs can feel like noise.

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But deals still get done that way. Relationships still start that way.

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The DM that kicked off this deal? It wasn’t some fancy intro. It wasn’t a 10-slide deck. It was just: “Hey, we built this. Want to take a look?”

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That’s all it takes sometimes.

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So if you’re building — keep building. If you’ve got something that deserves a home — reach out. You never know what might happen.